North China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region recently formulated and issued Several Measures on Strengthening the Construction of the Teaching Staff Groups Using State-compiled Textbooks in Ethnic Language Schools (Trial), according to information from the autonomous region’s education department.

The measures are in response to a decision by the central government that requires all grade 1 and grade 7 students in ethnic schools in Inner Mongolia to use State-compiled Chinese textbooks and to teach in Putonghua -- the standard form of modern Chinese language that takes the Beijing dialect as standard pronunciation -- from the fall semester of 2020.

Establishing a transitional counselor system

Inner Mongolia is encouraging Mongolian-Chinese bilingual teachers to provide after-school services to students who are having difficulty learning in Putonghua. 

Ethnic schools could address the surging demand for Mongolian-Chinese bilingual teachers through inter-school recruitment, providing teaching practice positions for graduates from normal universities and organizing university students to support bilingual teaching.

Establishing a supplementary mechanism for bilingual teachers during the transition period

Inner Mongolia will initiate an autonomous region-level special plan for hiring Mongolian-Chinese bilingual teachers using State-compiled textbooks. The plan will help to address potential shortages of bilingual teachers amid surging demand for qualified teachers.

It will also encourage schools to hire teachers who boast an excellent teaching record and retired within the past five years to support bilingual teaching.

Implementing the teachers’ ethics and teaching ability improvement plan

The plan requires that ethnic schools must insist on taking teachers’ ethics and teaching ability as the first criterion for teacher quality evaluation, establish a long-term mechanism for teacher ethics education and use the results of teachers’ ethics and teaching quality assessments as the prerequisites for position recruitment, title review and salary payment.

Measures to improve teachers’ ethics and teaching ability include organizing bilingual teachers to improve their teaching ability by studying online courses and selecting bilingual teachers to receive training at renowned domestic universities such as Beijing Normal University, Inner Mongolia Normal University and Northeast Normal University.

Implementing a high-quality teachers reserve plan

From 2021, Inner Mongolia will entrust Inner Mongolia Normal University and Inner Mongolia University for Nationalities to train bilingual teachers who instruct using State-compiled textbooks. The graduates must teach in Inner Mongolia’s ethnic schools after graduation.

For students who are studying in Inner Mongolia’s higher education institutions and plan to teach in ethnic schools in Mongolian after graduation, their courses will have an increased focus on teaching in Chinese, to improve their teaching ability using both Chinese and Mongolian.